Making the Most of an Imperfect World

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Rocketship started school the first week in September, the same as mommy (i.e., me). She entered a Montessori Toddler classroom, her first time being cared for in an institutional setting for more than an hour and a half (though, I’m not sure that the church nursery really counts as “institutional”).

The first week was great — the teachers told me how much they loved having her in class, loved her personality. The second and third weeks, she came down with a cold, and ran a fever on and off, becoming sluggish and not quite herself. The fourth week, she cried every nap time. And that Wednesday, the last day of school for the week, we were told that Rocketship cried so long and so hard that she woke up the other children. They didn’t mind that Rocketship wasn’t sleeping, though they wanted her to, but it was a problem that she was keeping 8 other children from having their nap.

Rocketship was sent home with a note. I called it a kind, positive riot act, which told us that for our daughter to get the most out of her classroom community, she would need to learn to be more independent. That would mean that mom and dad would have to change their behaviors. We would have to carry her less, and have her sleep by herself.

I sprang into action. Right after receiving the note, Rocketship and I went shopping for her big girl bed. I let her pick out sheets and a blanket and a pillow for her big girl bed. I helped her pick out big girl pjs. I helped her pick out a special big girl bedtime book. And we moved the Montessori floor bed (that she has never slept on, but played on often) out of the nursery to master bedroom we had all been sharing since she was born.

My partner and I knew that Rocketship was probably ready for this, and had been talking about it. But we weren’t ready. We liked having her in our bed, our little snuggle bug. We liked her relying on us for comfort, and her being with us. But now that had to change.

That night, we did the bedtime routine, with the addition of three stories (including the new special big girl bedtime book) and nursing with the lights on. I laid her down, and tucked her in, and walked out of the room. The door was left open, but we had a baby gate on the door so she couldn’t run out to us. And she cried. We did “gradual extinction” — I went in after 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes until she fell asleep without us. An hour later, she fell asleep leaning against the baby gate, and I led her to her bed, where she slept through the night.

I was sad after she fell asleep. She did it all by herself, as a big girl, even if it was hard and we had to help her.

A couple of people have asked me how it felt to have a teacher tell us to change our parenting techniques, and I have to say that I was resistant at first. One of the first notes home that hinted at a problem asked us to pick her up less when she was whining — which I was indignant about doing. “Why would I want to not respond to my child’s communications?!” I asked. So I didn’t do anything different.

But, when it became clear that Rocketship’s behaviors were affecting other children, I sprang into action, even though the same advice was offered. Why?

Because one of our family values is responsibility. This is a reference to the story by Harlan Ellison called Paladin of the Lost Hour. We view responsibility — cleaning up after ourselves, behaving correctly according to the situation — as a bridge to respect. That’s how we can respect ourselves and others, by being responsible.

Rocketship needs to act responsibly at school — she needs to behave correctly. And as her parents, we need to help her do that. And in that sense, the note home from the teacher wasn’t about changing our parenting techniques so much as reminding us about our values.

I think this is a first in at least a two year series where I take what I’m learning in my Master of Public Policy program and using the concepts to develop my blogging — and more than that, develop my empathy and my activism. For my State and Local Policy Analysis course, we read four chapters out of Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making by Deborah Stone. Each chapter outlined a dimension of policy analysis — i.e. how we know if a policy is good or bad — and how these claims are political and relative. Equity, efficiency, liberty, and security are all goals of public policy, justifications for government action (or inaction), as well as criteria to judge policy.

The first chapter we read was about Equity. I actually have mentioned equity before, in my talk on chores, but in policy we talk about equity because equality isn’t always fair, but equity is an attempt to make a division that is fair, even if it isn’t always equal.

So, what is equitable? Equity is, of course, a political claim. It’s a discussion about who gets what, when, where, and how (which is the classical definition of politics I learned in high school). Or, in the case of chores, who has to do what, when, where, and how. But what might seem straight forward is actually fraught with questions.

How do we define the recipients of a good, or the participants in a policy? A lot of politics has to do with how you define the “in” group versus the “out” group. Since I started with the chores example, I might as well follow through. The current participants in the running of our household are myself and Tim. You might argue that my mom also participates in the running of my household as she sometimes pitches in and does a lot of child care. But I choose to define the household participants as my nuclear family. My mom is in the “out” group; she shouldn’t be assigned any chores. However, Tim and I need to be part of the household management.

What is it, exactly, that is being distributed? When I talk about household management, I am talking about chores that keep our household running; I’m holding parenting as a completely seperate list of tasks. If I were to define household management as inclusive of parenting, it would make sense to add my mom into the participants pool — but because of the way I’m defining the tasks (dishes, laundry, vaccuuming, etc, instead of diaper changes and naps), the participant pool is narrowed.

What is the process by which the good or resource is distributed? I described the process that I used to distribute chores in my marriage already. Part of the reason that process worked was that it was transparent at every step. When I wrote the list, I checked with Tim. When I distributed the chores, I did it with Tim. But other processes might have been seen as fair — like a random number generator. Or a lottery. But it seemed fair to us that we could pick chores that we liked and were good at.

Equity, in some ways, is the most straightforward of these four policy yardsticks, but as you can see — it’s all relative, even as we’re trying to be fair. Different political philosophies might come into this; how you define the “in” group and the “out” group all depends on your philosophy, but these are the basics.

I wrote this as a way to have a framework for my blog, and future discussions. Do you think this is helpful?

A friend asked that I write more about the process of choosing which chores are important, and which ones can be overlooked. She also asked about how to negotiate the standards of cleanliness and the sharing of chores so that in partnership, particularly marriage, they might be fair.

Tall order, dear friend.

I think that it’s obvious and perhaps over stated (at least on this blog, I have mentioned it at least two timesbefore) that men and women are socialized to different awarenesses of the work involved in housework, and if men have had the opportunity to care for themselves, different standards for what might be considered clean. The same might be said for what makes up a healthy diet, among other things I associate with adulthood.

I would not attempt these steps unless you have a partner who believes in equality, and is open to dividing the work that goes into the home equitably. (This means hours of paid and unpaid labor should be treated equally.) If you don’t have a such a partner, you have other work to do.

Step One: Shine a bright light on the work that needs to be done to keep your household moving. I found the housework equality scale from EquallySharedParenting.com invaluable for this — it lists chores that happen less often, like post office visits and taxes, so you don’t forget anything.

Tim and I actually looked at this scale twice over about a period of a year and a half. The first time was really tense — Tim didn’t seem to think that a lot of stuff on the list happened in our home. Truth was, I did it, and he didn’t notice. Even though it was a tense conversation, it was important because it opened his eyes. A year later, he was very aware of the work that needed doing, and who was doing it. Since I am currently a stay-at-home wife and mother, the split was about 70% me, 30% him. I asked him if he thought this was fair, and to his credit, he did not think so. Which lead to…

Step Two: Figure out what chores are actually getting done in your home. Chores are done in my house for three reasons, as far as I can see: for our safety, like washing cutting boards and knives with hot and soapy water to prevent food-borne illness; for our sanity, like clearing off flat surfaces of clutter; and for our vanity, like my husband’s recent desire to wash marks off the wall. This list has the benefit of showing you what’s really important to you, and thus the “standards” already exist. I made a list of chores that needed to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly, and basis — focusing on safety and sanity, and telling vanity to take a hike.

Vanity is beating myself up for not scrubbing the bathroom once a week, whether or not anyone besides ourselves sees it. But if the bathroom is done once a month, the germs are kept at bay (Safety!), and I have the satisfaction of knowing exactly how clean it is. And knowing how clean it is, I can figure out if I need to clean real quick before guests come over.

Step Three: Present the list of chores that must get done to your partner and ask what they think. Ask them if they think that any chore is missing; ask them if they think any of the chores can be taken off the list.

Tim wanted to add vacuuming and dusting to the list. Me? I could care less that things are dusted, and I hate vacuuming. Tim doesn’t necessarily see the need to fold clothes.

Step Four: Divide and Conquer. Once you have a list of the chores that you need to do to keep your household moving, chores that are for your safety and sanity (and not necessarily your vanity), and both partners have weighed in on what chores should be on the list, take turns claiming chores. If there are certain chores that only you can do, or that you’re an expert at, or you really like to do, claim those first — it wasn’t on the list, but since only I can breast feed our daughter, I would have claimed that first. I did claim making dinner first, because after a day of childcare, making dinner makes me feel human again.

Dusting and vacuuming got added to the “monthly chore” list, which Tim is in charge of. I picked up folding laundry. But more on that next.

Step Five: Make a schedule. Schedules make sure that there are time to do all the chores. I suggest spacing the chores through the week so you’re not doing more than half an hour of chores each night. The nice thing about a schedule is that even if none of the chores get done one week, you can do it the next week and start to come out from under a lack-of-chore pile. At least theoretically.

So far, all the chores are getting done in our home, because Tim and I both feel ownership of our tasks — and we do them. They don’t always get done right on time; laundry folding happened on Saturday instead of Tuesday, but at least it happened.

Step Six: If it’s not your chore, it’s not your standard. There are downsides to sharing household responsibilities. Because your partner is an adult who has hopefully lived on their own for a time before coming to live with you, chances are, your partner has some idea how to do the tasks that they named, agreed to, and claimed as their own. (Look how much consensus we built up until this point!) If your partner asks for input on how to do the task, feel free to give it. Otherwise, let them get on with it — you have your own chores to do.

Tim is the one that cleans the kitchen and the bathroom. He also does the laundry. He checks in with me sometimes, but the majority of the time he applies his own standards to the task. And for me, that’s fine — but it’s a serious ego muncher for some women. Remember, equality is about sharing power. If you claim all the power and responsibility of the household standards, you’re only hurting yourself.

Step Seven: Rinse, Repeat. The same chore list isn’t going to always work for you. Be flexible, and keep the lines of communication that you’ve created here open over time!

I’m lucky to be starting grad school at the end of this month. I say lucky because I have a small fellowship, because I have an infant, because I have a supportive husband. I’m lucky because my mom is going to take care of my baby; I won’t have to take out loans to pay for childcare.

I wasn’t always comfortable with the idea of my mom being my daycare provider. Sylvie is familiar with my mom and comfortable with her. And I have had plenty of chances to observe the two of them together. Those two things are not something you can sneeze at; everything I have read about vetting facilities says those are things you want.

Not only that, but I was able to broach the idea of making “Nanny Notes” and sharing them with my mom — that way my mom knows exactly how I would like my daughter to be cared for (i.e. I am clear about my expectations) and she knows exactly how to spoil my daughter (i.e. I expect my mom to still be a grandparent and do what she wants occasionally).

Nothing I found on the internet about preparing your child for daycare really approached the subject the way I have in my own preparations, so I thought I would share my list.

What I want from a Non-parental Caregiver:

1. Someone who will love her, bond with her; someone who will build trust with her. I subscribe more or less to the Attachment Parenting philosophy espoused by Dr. Sears, and I believe that attachment is key in Sylvie’s development — particularly the psychosocial development task of infancy: learning to trust. This means that when Sylvie cries, my ideal caregiver will respond, because crying is a way of communicating need. Which brings us to…

2. Someone to fulfill her needs. Her needs, as I see them currently, are: eating, sleeping, clean diapers, play, and love. Since Sylvia is breastfed, this means that I will be providing her grandmother with expressed breast milk. Sylvia is not too keen on her bottle, so we may be switching to more of a sippy cup soon. She will start solids at six months, so those kinds of equipment will be needed as well. Sylvie will need a couple of swaddle blankets and a pacifier for her grandma’s house. I gave my mom a set of cloth diapers already. We’ll need to make sure there are good toys at both home and at grandma’s. And I know my mom loves Sylvia.

3. Someone to keep her safe and secure; provide limits. This means that my mom and I will work together to make sure that my mom’s house is appropriately child-proofed, but it also means that we will have to work jointly on discipline issues. Right now, discipline isn’t too much of an issue — after all, she is only an infant. But by the time I graduate, which is when I foresee this arrangement ending, Sylvie will be old enough to be willfully disobeying. We don’t want to give her mixed messages about what is and is not appropriate, which will require communication. Also, I want Sylvie to be disciplined with positive methods, which will also require communication, so that my mom knows what I mean when I say this.

4. Someone to play with her, and to be her partner in learning. I believe that play is the key to learning, and so I think it’s very important that Sylvia plays. Of course, she can and does play on her own, but play with an adult is important too, because it provides Sylvie and opportunity to stretch her skills with a technique called scaffolding. The play should be directed by Sylvie, if at all possible, to give her a sense of efficacy. Reading is play too!

5. Someone who respects our boundaries as her parents. I am the momma, and with my husband we are ultimately responsible for Sylvia’s care and upbringing. How we want things done matters. However, this means we are also responsible for communicating those boundaries. A major way we’re going to do this is through “memo” type of correspondence; I like to have things in writing.

The thing about this list is that it’s basically what I expect from myself as a parent. I think that’s as it should be — the care for my daughter by non-parental caregivers should be as close to what her parents provide as possible.

I won’t pretend that being a mother to a small child is the most stimulating thing in the whole wide world. After all, the little being you’re caring for is still developing — and unable to carry on a conversation.

The first several weeks before baby Rocketship began responding to my flirting were the hardest. I found myself doing inane things, like shaking a rattle in her face, hoping she would follow it with her eyes. I ended up tweeting this, and days later getting this response:

I went and investigated this guy –I have a stalker, and so I was afraid that he had found me, for all that I don’t do much to disguise my identity on the internet. It appears that he’s just an asshole who decided to look at the #momtweets hash tag and make fun of women, and that for some reason, he aimed his ire particularly at me, and only me.

I tweeted the discovery of my daughter tracking her eyes simply because I realized how ridiculous it was to spend so much time shaking a rattle for her. It was making fun of myself. But this mysterious stranger clearly hated women — and he seemed to hate me i for being in on what he seemed to think was his private joke.

I’ve been thinking about pregnancy announcements for a long time, long before I ever got pregnant. As some of my peers have “moved to Bolivia,” pregnancy announcements appeared on Facebook — and congratulations followed… as well as many baby-related updates and pictures.

It’s very similar with blogs written by women — blogs that are about work/life balance, or growing up emotionally, or searching for your place in the world… once these women become pregnant, become mothers, all of them seem to become mommy blogs. There’s nothing wrong with mommy blogs. Some of them are quite funny, poignant, and awesome.

But it seems to me that this kind of baby-centric naval-gazing that mothers often indulge in is part of the New Momism — the idea that the only way for women to be “real” women is for them to have children, and for them to put those children first, first, first.

My goal with my imagined pregnancy announcements has always been to convey the important news (that I’m expecting a baby!), but reassure that I realized that while my responsibilities and identities may be shifting, I still wanted to be part of a larger society, that my life hasn’t changed all that much since that first positive pregnancy test, that I’m still struggling to find my place in this world and relate to people, and generally build a remarkable life.

Four pregnancy announcements that I think would potentially convey this message:

1.

Dear friends:

I hereby pledge to try to reign in any smugness that may occur due to my current gestation. There will be a certain amount a naval-gazing (literal and figurative) as this time progresses, but I’m still very interested in you as people. I hope you will remain interested in my non-pregancy related pursuits, which include being more than a incubator.

Love, Kate

2. My husband works at a company that produces software for the manufacturing industry. I wanted him to send the following announcement to his coworkers:

Subtitle/Customized Alt-text: We’re in production!

I particularly like this one, because it emphasizes the “normal” nature of having a kid, and identifies what’s going on in a clever way.

3. Another XKCD comic, this one perhaps better for a second pregnancy, but if you clip it to just the first frame, it’d be perfect for a first pregnancy:

Text: Please excuse the panic while we attempt to become parents. ❤

So, really

In all reality, I’ll give you details. I’m just shy of 3 months pregnant. I’m due the second half of April/beginning of May (I believe in giving mothers a wide range of time to get on that birth bandwagon). I know it’s a huge, life-altering event, but I don’t want to make a big deal out of it — it’s part of normal life. I’m still working, I’m still planning to work. I’m still writing a novel this November, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing after AmeriCorps. I’m still trying to find a community and be a better partner to my husband.

It just so happens that every once in a while, I hate to admit, I rediscover that pure stomach bile is yellow. (As one of my pregnant friends put it: I have never been in so many funny-in-retrospect situations involving body fluids.)

We’ve lost the art of democratic debate, says Michael Sandel. He gives a wonderful talk during TED about moral philosophy and justice — and how to reintroduce them into our politics. He paraphrases Aristole’s theory of justice: “Justice means giving people what they deserve.” He says the real questions begin when we consider who deserves what and why, that we have to reason about the purpose of the thing or the activity, to fully provide justice to all.

So, this of course has me thinking. I have thought about the Mommy Myth, which demystified the current state of motherhood, deconstructing the societal forces which prompt women to give everything they have to motherhood, and devote their entire being to supporting their children.

I’ve been thinking about Misconceptions, by Naomi Wolf, which describes a very hetero-normative, upper class view of childbirth and the immediate postpartum experience — but it also talks about that which is concealed from women, in (from her view) a very strange vow of social silence. (And, I might argue, if choices are limited for the rich people — it’s got to be much worse for those in poverty.)

I’ve been thinking about a book I read in college, which I no longer own but was thinking about retrieving via the library system called “The Failed Century of the Child” — a book about the policies that were put into place during the 20th century which attempted, and failed, to remove children from poverty, and to make education a democratic thing.

I’m reading Raising America, by Ann Hulbert, who explores this question in her book: “As children — and just as important, their mothers — prepare to meet the pressures and the allures of an increasingly materialistic and meritocratic mass society, is it more discipline or more bonding that they need at home? the answers to the question have in turn reflected the long-running debate over whether nature or nurture counts most in shaping children’s destinies, which parenting experts across the spectrum and the decades have presumed are decisively cast in early childhood (7).”

So, to go back to the beginning of this post: What is the essential role of motherhood? What is the role of the mother to a child as an infant, a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, etc.? What is the role of the mother to herself during those same time periods? To her partner? To her family, and friends? The “common sense” wisdom seems to be that of primary care giver, and more than that, to be romantically (like “Leaves of Grass” romantic) obsessed with your child, watching their every coo and gurgle.

And, the flip question. What is the role of a father? I think that one is much more cut and dry to the “common sense” — the role of the father seems to be that of helper and bread-winner, and possibly the laughably un-knowledgeable one, as offered to us by sitcoms and commercials.

But is this really the purpose of mothers and fathers? What do you all think?